The Tinkers Academy Conversation

Internet Marketing Reluctance

From my latest round of email, online, and offline discussions I have found that in the personal growth, self-help field (in this case, SelfGrowth “Experts”), there are a large number of people who make their living helping others and who are essentially Internet-illiterate. They know they ’should’ be using the Internet, but they are reluctant or are otherwise slow about adopting it.

I don’t know how many or what percentage of Self-Growth “Experts” are late in embracing Internet technology, but I notice that there are hundreds of SelfGrowth “Expert” pages which have been claimed and named, but which have not had any entries made. And, in our Mastermind group of SelfGrowth “Experts,” our members are often asking each other for how-to advice for their Internet Marketing activities.

I’m just wondering how we can help those in this personal growth & self-help field find ways to improve their business and leverage their expertise for wider distribution of their messages by using technology. Are there ways of using the Internet to get our messages out to more people and would this benefit them?

In conversations they say that they have tried one or two things on the Internet and they have yet to figure out how to make this new-fangled technology work for themselves. So, they continue to orient themselves into their one-to-one and small seminar arena.

Internet Marketing Problems and Concerns

Here is a list of problems and concerns I have recently noticed in this community with respect to adopting Internet technology into their businesses:

• Internet Marketing is confusing for them.
• They do not understand what to do or how to do it.
• The things they have tried did not work.
• They object (emotionally and/or ethically) to many of the popular Internet Marketing techniques.
• They feel overwhelmed by the complexity that seems inherent in the Internet in general and in Internet Marketing in particular.
• They are afraid they will lose the one-to-one personal connection with their clients.
• They do not see the benefit in using Internet Marketing, because their calendar is already full.

I’m developing another video to talk about this aspect of the SelfGrowth Expert community. Maybe by working together, we can all help each other improve our impact on the world. I think that by using the Internet we can grow our individual impact.

Comment About Internet and Internet Marketing

Will you use the Comment link at the bottom of this post to expand all of our understanding of this issue? Whether you are successful with Internet Marketing or not, will you tell us about it?

1. With respect to using the Internet, what have you tried that worked and that didn’t work?
2. Do you think that you ’should’ be using the Internet for getting your message out?
3. Do you think that Internet Marketing is helping your personal growth / self-help business?
4. In addition to the list of problems and concerns I showed before, what are your problems and concerns with Internet Marketing?
5. On an Expertise scale of 1 to 10 (where 10 is “Internet guru,” and 1 is “have trouble turning on my computer”), what is your current level of Expertise with computers and using the Internet for your business?
6. If you decided to improve your level of computer expertise, what form of learning traditionally works best for you: classroom, video, mentor, individual projects, group projects, one teacher or multiple teachers, demos, trial-&-error? Please explain situations with computers and Internet where your learning was successful.
7. Is there anything else you think is important about this topic of adopting Internet Marketing for your business, or Internet Marketing in general?

Rodger Bailey

PS: Comment now while you are still here. I’m listening.

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